HAIR

***** (...out of 5 stars)

The Public at the Delacorte

This production kicks ass! After only ever seeing a couple of well-intentioned/poorly-realized regional community concoctions of this late sixties rock musical, sitting outside in Central Park at the Delacorte and watching this faithful, energetic, thrilling revival, I finally GOT why Hair was such a ground-breaking musical. And that makes me very happy. The sexy cast, led by Jonathan Groff and Will Swenson gyrates and wails and makes the audience feel like they're guests at a real live be-in. Staging this musical in Central Park under the moon at the Delacorte, with intermittent gusts of wind blowing through the fringe and the miles of wavy curls, is a perfect choice. I felt genuinely transported and was literally overcome with emotion by the end of it all. This is one of the best theatrical productions I have seen this year.

MITF/Writer's Block

In Shaun Gunning's Writer's Block, a playwright trying to meet the expectations (and deadlines) of his latest work struggles to turn his love-hate relationship with his agent into a means of inspiration. Mr. Gunning plays what very well may be himself--Daniel--a playwright tragically blocked by his ex-fiancee's sudden abandonment of him . . . for his brother. It's enough to drive anyone to drink one's deadlines away, even as the repo men take everything but an empty bookcase, and as the bathrobe starts to musk up around you. As he's egged on by his agent, Paula (Kate Dulcich), he stumbles his way through a series of comic failures, from a Shepard-like adaptation of his own life--in which Jack (Jack Marshall) loses his fiancee to his meth-addict brother, Gary (Steve Orlikowski)--to a sequel to a sophomoric gangster comedy, "Chicago, 1923," which playfully packs more fish-related puns into a ten-minute gag than a whole can of sardines (sans the stink). The play also spoofs the "murder mystery" play, but thankfully, the jokes aren't at anyone's expense, for they tie together into a classic showdown between a writer and his own creations, with a little romance thrown in for resolution.

Dance at Bataan

So far as dances go, Blake Bradford's Dance at Bataan is more or less a cha-cha: two steps forward, two steps back. On the back step, there are unsteady actors who look like they're being put through the paces, and a plot that covers way too much ground (PTSD may be the subject of Hannah's dissertation, but it's got little to do with the play). This rush of development forces the actors to show actions rather than to act on them: Jim Heaphy twitches his left arm and quivers his voice to show Mr. Edward's reluctance to speak with Hannah, and Christine Vinh gets so bogged down in playing Hannah as "a cold-hearted bitch" that she never shows any emotion. Moving forward, Blake's parallel story, a glimpse at Mr. Edward's experiences at Bataan (where one out of seven US POWs died)--is surprisingly comic, and the acting is sharp, though still too dispassionate for a dance. Blake's direction is often more emotional than the actors: though he stretches the imagery with too much repetition (Claire haunted by her husband, Marvin, and Hannah inexplicably visited by Tokyo Rose), this otherworldly presence (especially the violent Japanese soldiers, who are shown by pantomimed reactions) pulls good performances out of the actors, particularly Sarah Hankins, who doubles as Chris and Claire. Pick up the tempo, watch that posture, and tighten up the routine (by which I mean the steps of the plot), and Dance at Bataan may merit an encore.

Marie Antoinette: The Color of Flesh

The clever script often manipulates passion to make a point, but on the whole, the able cast and precise direction make Marie Antoinette: The Color of Flesh an entertaining play.

[Reviewed for Time Out New York]

Yellow Electras

Chuck Mee would be proud of Peter A. Campbell's Yellow Electras, which patches together a series of existing adaptations, from the classic Greek dramas of Sophocles and Euripedes to the melodic Richard Strauss and Kandinsky operas. The buffet of styles buffets the viewer, with Peter Ksander's design stretching the three Electras (Genevieve De Galliande, Laura Heidinger, and Karen Rich) across three computer terminals, video conferenced up on one wall, while on the other, a chorus of sixteen girls look on, Brady Bunch style, through a series of digital boxes. This modernist approach is somewhat tacky, though aesthetically pleasing, but it's no surprise that the strongest segments--Rich's arias and Heidinger's violent breakdown--are grounded in physical presence rather than electronic transference. The collage, in itself, doesn't build up to anything--in fact, some of the snippets, which address acting itself, assert that "fragments, bits, and pieces do not give us a sense of the whole." What Yellow Electras does is illustrate a series of styles, a physical dramaturgy of Electra that will, unfortunately, largely be of service only to those who are readying themselves to adapt a Greek drama, and intermittently cool for the edgy theatergoer.

The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac

Photo/Lucien Samaha

Taylor Mac comes to us in drag, green-faced and glittery, with a thickly clumped wig, but despite his eccentric act (high energy rants modulated by ukulele), don't mistake him for an alien. He's a wildman, a performance artist born in the crucible of gay nightclub basements. The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac is a messy sampler of his previous solo shows: by the end of the night (after opening "Pandora's suitcase"), he's standing in a sea of old costumes. The overall topic of this self-proclaimed "subversive jukebox musical" is to pierce what "the bubble of preparation," in which America (and, by inclusion, audiences) attempt to shelter themselves from harm by "preparing for the surprise." Two things are made clear by the bubble of light that surrounds him: first, that Taylor Mac cannot be contained by David Drake's direction, and second, that for all his mania--singing breasts and all--there's nothing particularly shocking about Taylor Mac.

[Read on]